He's My Brother
by Persephone Price
Summary: A series of snapshots from Sam and Dean's lives.
1. August, 2001 - Omaha, NE

**A/N: Hey everyone! So, this is my Sam & Dean-centric series of one-shots. The title comes from the Hollies' song 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother.' Each chapter will probably vary length, but this one is a bit short. I hope you all enjoy it nevertheless! The chapters aren't going to be related to each other, unless I specify otherwise.**

**Disclaimer: Believe it or not, I don't own Supernatural.**

**Spoilers: None**

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><p><em>Omaha, Nebraska<em>

_August, 2001_

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><p>After he and Sam left Truman High School in Fairfax, Indiana, Dean never set foot in a school again – at least not as a student.<p>

It was bizarre, how fluidly the whole thing happened. There was no discussion, no parental interference or outrage, no lecture, no door-slamming or grandiose display of teenage rebellion. He just… stopped going.

Dean had considered dropping out of school for years – they don't teach you how to hunt a werewolf in school, they don't teach you how to do anything he would ever need to know in school. Who cares what the derivative of 2x^2 is when people are dying?

The only reason he had continued to go was because of Sammy. His brother knew how to fight, but he was small and sensitive; anyone who could sense weakness could sense that that little twerp had a bleeding heart. He might as well have had a bull's-eye painted on his back.

Of course, it was Dean's responsibility to protect him, and so he had gone to school – he'd nearly _finished _school.

But when Dad finished the hunt in Indiana and they moved on to gank a wraith in Phoenix, Sam started up classes and Dean never did. Sam had hit a growth spurt over winter break and didn't really need him anymore, and he was vital and strong and eighteen years old and ready to fully immerse himself in the family business.

Dad agreed.

So, with only one semester of education left to obtain his degree, in typical Dean Winchester-fashion, he quit.

He was never even good at school, anyway. Sammy got the brains, he got the brawn. That's just the way it was. Sure, maybe he was decent at crunching numbers and he was no slob when it came to home ec., but Sam was the one with a real gift. That kid could write. He was going places – everyone could see it. Dean was just his bonafide bodyguard.

Nobody cared that Dean dropped out of high school. Not the teachers, not his own family. No one even mentioned that it happened; it was as natural as the changing seasons, it was _expected_.

That was fine, though – the monsters didn't care either, so neither did Dean. He already had all the skills he could ever need. Yeah, maybe he was shit with Shakespeare, but he could sure as hell read a roadmap, and the phrases on highway markers were the only ones he would ever need to understand. What could a slip of paper possibly mean to him when his time could be better spent saving people?

Sam was different. Those teachers Dean never gave half a rat's ass about? Sam listened to them. That slip of paper meant a hellova lot to Sam. It meant _everything_ to Sam. It meant more than his own family.

Like he always said – Sam was going places. Sam _is_ going places.

Like right now. Sam's stuffing his shit into an army-surplus duffel bag.

From the doorway, Dean begs, "Sam, please…"

"No," he bites. "No. You know I can't stay here. I can have a _life_, Dean, a real one."

As though Dean can't. As though none of them ever can except for him. As though this isn't a real life – if it's not real, what is it? Fake? Dean's face must contort in some way, because upon seeing it he amends, "You know what I mean." There's a pause, during which time Sam's indeterminately colored eyes search his. "Come with me," he suggests finally.

Dean blows out a sharp breath from his lungs, turning his eyes up to the water-stained ceiling. "You know I can't," he tells him flatly.

Sam, looking crestfallen, replies, "Yeah. I know."

"Don't go, Sammy," Dean tries again. "Don't go. This family is all we have, all we have _ever_ had."

"I know," he says, laughing bitterly, "I know! That's exactly why I've gotta get out! Can't you see how messed up this is, Dean?"

Of course he can. Of course he fucking can.

But it's not their life that's messed up – it's Sam. He just wants to shake him, shake him until his teeth rattle in his skull and he understands. For someone so smart, he's frustratingly stupid. If there were a Winchester family handbook, it would only have one line written in it: stick together. It's so simple, it's so, so simple. Sam can recognize Iambic Pentameter in a heartbeat. Sam knows what words like 'loquacious' mean. So why the _hell _doesn't he understand this?

Sam is supposed to know how to read between the lines. He's supposed to understand subtext.

He's supposed to know that when Dad says, _If you walk out that door, don't you ever come back_, he really means, _I love you, son, and I can't lose you too. Please don't go._

If Dean can understand it, Sam sure as hell should.

"Fine. Go," Dean shouts raggedly, beckoning wildly to the ramshackle front door. "Don't let us hold you back any longer."

Sam doesn't understand the subtext in this, either.

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><p><strong>AN: Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!**


	2. November, 2014 - New Canaan, CT

**A/N: Yeah, I don't know. I noticed Dean's started doing this and then this happened. Thanks ImpalaLove for reviewing the last chapter!**

**Spoilers: Season 10**

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><p><em>New Canaan, Connecticut<em>

_November, 2014_

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><p>He knows it has something to do with the First Blade, he just isn't sure what it means.<p>

He never does it around Sam. Sammy already reads far too much into his every action, no matter how insignificant, and he doesn't want to give him even more fodder for skepticism. No, he only does it when he's alone.

Because the weight of everything feels wrong in his hands, now. Anything can be made into a weapon – Dean should know – but he has become attached to one very particular one. And when adrenaline pumps through his veins his hand searches it out, but it's always, _always _met with a cheap imitation.

Sometimes, it's met with nothing at all. When he wakes up in the middle of the night thrashing, grasping fistfuls of dead, empty air, he knows his body is reaching for it on its own accord. His blood cries for it, pounding like a jackhammer in his temples.

It's almost fitting that the Blade is made of animal bone, because surely his own skeleton became fused with it. It was an extension of his own body, as natural as any appendage he'd been born with. And without it, now, he feels as though something has been… severed.

So – as a demon – when he picked up that hammer, it felt wrong, and – as a human – when he picked up that wrench, it still felt wrong. He'd tested them both in his hand, flexing his fingers around the hilts, longing for something different. The cold metal froze a trail of ice through his veins, aggravating that mark, angering it, making it pulsate hotly to remind him it's still there, it's still _part of him_, and he's still branded.

But what Sam doesn't see, he can't analyze, and what he can't analyze, he can't bitch about. Dean internalizes his suspicions, his fears, because it's what he always does, and maybe, in doing so now, he can feel a bit more like himself and scrub away at whatever vile residue was left behind inside him.

So when Sam complains about those extra shots, he could almost laugh – _You have no idea_, he thinks, knuckles tightening around the steering wheel to fill a void that can't be filled. Again, the Mark throbs, smoldering just beneath his skin.

_You have no idea._

_I miss it._


	3. July, 1999 - Unknown, OK

**A/N: This is just a random drabble. Thanks so much to ImpalaLove and moira4eku for reviewing!**

**Spoilers: None**

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><p><em>Unknown, Oklahoma<em>

_July, 1999_

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><p>There's dust from the road in his nose, and in his eyes.<p>

He looks up, trying to see the sky, trying to see…

If it's dark or light.

It's light, for now, the sun swollen and orange, like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked from the horizon. It's bleeding a trail of pink and purple as it sinks, heavy, falling, making room for its shier sister, the moon.

The dust stings. He tries to wipe it away with the back of his hand, but the pain only intensifies. His eyes grow watery and he wipes harder, makes it even worse.

His hand comes away dirty, streaked.

He could move out of the road, he supposes, but where's the point in that?

Right now, this road is the only path in his life, and the vision of it stretching onwards is the only thing promising him a future.

He walks dead-center, kicking up gravel and that damned, wafting powder. He can feel it now in all his pores, like it's claiming him.

_Are you crazy, Sammy? Walkin' in the middle of the road? You're gonna get yourself killed_, some small voice nags.

He shakes his head; there are no cars, and if there were he has faith they wouldn't hit him. He's hard to miss.

He must be quite the sight, really. Picturesque. A runaway teen treading confidently into the sunset, backpack slung over his shoulder and nothing but a couple of crumpled dollar-bills shoved into his denim pockets.

He's sure someone'll come after him at some point, once Dad gets his head out of his ass and Dean gets his head out of Susie Parson's-

No. Gross.

That's such a Dean thing to think, he worries. Maybe he'll never be rid of them, not even now. Maybe they'll speak to him through his own, seditious brain cells.

He snorts to himself. Figures. He can't even enjoy this moment of solitude without the echo of his brother's ridiculous, forcedly-gruff voice filling his head, a doing an imitation of their dad he'll never fully understand.

He tries to focus on another sound, any other sound, but his thoughts always make him go deaf.

So he decides to blight another one of his senses; he looks again at the sun, its vanishing-act unfolding right before his very eyes. The light only burns half as much as the dust.

When it becomes unbearable, he turns his speckled gaze away, in the direction of some graffiti on a '25 MPH' road marker. Red on white. As his eyesight struggles to normalize, the words come into focus:

_Where are you going, Sam?_

Sam looks at the moon.


	4. Cold Oak, SD - Pontiac, IL

**A/N: Just experimenting. Never done this POV before.**

**Spoilers: Season 2, Season 3**

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><p><em>You died.<em>

I chanted useless lies and platitudes like '_You're gonna be all right, you're gonna be just fine_,' but you just… died.

Right on your knees, right in front of me. I saw it. I saw your face relax, your injury too grave for pain. I saw your eyes dim, I saw them turn from hazel to milky brown. I saw a thin line of blood slither down your chin, while a surge of it gushed from your back. I felt it on my hands, on my skin…

I've scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, but…

You had the face of a boy, but the body of a man. That face in my hands, in my brain, behind my eyes when I close them…

And then that too-big body on a twin-sized mattress in an empty house. No, not just empty – destroyed, ravaged, moldering. Just like my insides, just like my heart – or lack thereof, now. Someone came in and smashed everything up, hadn't even left a note, hadn't even left a name. Everything was just broken, with no explanation and no one to blame.

What was his name? How could he ruin us like this? He doesn't even know us. We're not bad people, we don't deserve this.

But I'm not angry. I don't want revenge, because the only thing that matters to me is lying five feet away on a lumpy heap of springs and soiled fabric.

I carried you out of our dead father's car, cradled you in my arms like I hadn't since I carried you out of our burning home. I laid you down carefully on that revolting mattress like you could break, like you weren't already broken.

I feel just as betrayed as you should, with that knife jutting out of your spinal cord. How could anyone do this to me, how could anyone take so much? When does it end?

Whoever created the concept of _fairness _or _justice _and whatever other bullshit concepts help them sleep at night ruined everything before it even began. But I never resented them for it, because whenever I saw something I wanted but couldn't have, I looked in the backseat and saw I had something they never would.

I looked in the backseat on the way over. Your skin was gray and your body was limp, head lolling against the leather, hair still pasted to the dried sweat on your brow. It's really something, seeing sweat on a corpse. It's like a wilted flower retaining its color; it's just unnatural.

Drove on the opposite side of the double yellow line for a while, too. No cars came by, unfortunately. I wouldn't have seen them if they did, with what a mess I am, with the tears burning like acid in my eyes. But I'm still alive, so this has gotta be how it went. God decided to punish me further for my unknown crime. Because of course – why wouldn't he?

It's been three days. Your limbs are stiff and your flesh is colorless, bleached by death. But your face is the same, just darker around the eyes and lips.

Bobby says you're gonna start to smell, soon.

I wouldn't know, since I haven't smelled anything but salt for three days straight. I'm disgusted with myself in every single way I can think of.

Like I said, you look the same and totally different all at once, and every time I look at you bile rises in my throat. I've stopped retching because I've stopped eating, because everything I put in my mouth tastes like blood and vomit and ash and...

Even the whiskey. Even the barrel of-

I'm doing this for myself, Sam. I know what gunpowder tastes like now, just like I know it's not what you would want, just like I know _this _is not what you would want. But I'm doing this to survive. We're survivors, we Winchesters. Aren't we? It may not seem like it, but why put us through so much if we weren't meant to endure it? No – we're survivors. That's all I can accept, that's the only reality I can bear to live in – one in which we overcome this, at any cost, at _all _costs.

And this is how we have to survive.

.

.

.

.

.

_You were dead._

And I couldn't move from the wall.

I heard your screams, I still hear them.

And I did _nothing_ – after everything you've done for me, everything you've sacrificed, I did _nothing_.

There was blood all over the floor. Where were we, even? Some house? Somewhere nice?

I slipped in your blood once I finally got down from that wall, slipped on my way over to you. Fell to my knees. Assessed the damage, like Dad always taught us.

Your guts were spilling out of you.

By now I've seen some shit, but I'm not sure if your corpse was more or less upsetting than all the others. On one hand, you're _Dean, _my brother, and nothing about you could ever be disgusting, but on the other you're _Dean_, my brother, and everything about seeing you like this makes me want to puke _my_ guts out.

You would've liked that, that 'guts' connection. You could always make the best of a bad situation.

I can't.

I dragged you out of the house, too distraught to carry you like I should have. You're not even that heavy.

There was blood all over the Impala too, but don't worry, I cleaned it.

I didn't know where to go, so I went to Bobby's.

I cleaned you up there, in the tub we used to use as kids. Scrubbed you til your rubbery skin was raw, put your intestines back inside and sewed you up like some kind of sobbing surgeon. The stitches are a total mess. You'd make fun of them.

Closing your eyes was the worst part. I found myself wishing you could have just died with your eyes closed, as one last favor to me. How fucked up is that?

But I managed it. After all the major stuff was done – all the (many) patches of flesh reunited – I took a damp washcloth and wiped your face. I always thought of you as the older brother, but it was only then that I realized just how young you really were. Too young. Way too young, Dean.

Why'd you have to go and do this, huh? Why'd you have to do this? It's because of me – because of me, you're dead, and I'll never forgive you for it. Never. How could you put this on me? How could you make me live with this?

I didn't leave you, not for a long time. We put you… We put you on that bed you used to sleep in, next to the window, with the other one right next to it – mine. I slept in the room with you that night, still covered in your blood while you lay immaculate and lifeless in the bed not three feet over.

_It ain't right,_ Bobby told me, and yeah, maybe it wasn't, but shit when has something being right ever mattered?

When I woke up, for a second I thought… I thought maybe it had been a – a dream, a _nightmare_…

But no.

You were there, real, dead.

Bobby said we had to burn you, like Dad, like everyone else.

I said no.

"No, Bobby, fucking no!" I screamed, tears racing down my cheeks, sticky and hot and wholly unwelcome. "I'm not burning him, I'm not! It's _Dean_!" Your name tasted like a prayer, but every time I said it, it felt like a curse. I said it to him like it meant something, like it meant something to anyone other than me.

Was it a knee-jerk reaction? Probably. But I… I just couldn't. The thought of destroying your body, the only piece I had left of you, of _anyone_-

I couldn't.

Bobby just shook his head, knowing it was useless to try to dissuade me.

I sped to Pontiac, Illinois. I dug a ditch as deep as I could, to keep the elements from getting to you. I dug and dug and dug until the dirt started to obscure your stain on me.

I placed you in gently, I stood in that hole with you. I considered entombing myself, too.

But I didn't.

And now you're here, but you were _dead_, and I feel nothing but shame because this means that someone else came through for you when I didn't.


	5. Randolph, NY - Lebanon, KS

**A/N: Thank you so so so so much to Charloes Angels, ImpalaLove, and helinahandcart for reviewing! Get pumped for episode 10 tonight! Since you guys didn't seem to mind the angst or the unconventional layout, here's take 2...**

**Spoilers: Season 9**

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><p>Somewhere, between all the wires and monitors and heartless blips, there must be meaning. He searches for it through clouded eyes, searches for it with a clouded mind.<p>

After everything, he asks himself, _How can you still search?_

IVs and tubes are hooked up to his brother's body, twisted and tangled like a failed marionette's strings. Controlling his heart, his lungs, his blood, but not his fate. They can't bring him to life, can't make him act how he's supposed to. They can't reel Dean out of this pit of abject misery, can't break the haze of wrong and wronger.

But he searches. He searches because he's searched before, because he's found salvation more than once.

The words in his brain don't match the ones falling from his lips.

_Just one more time, _he pleads, _just one more time._

Dean is tainted, stained, but, despite striving and shamming his entire life to be otherwise, not faithless. He knows he doesn't deserve this, knows that redemption is as far beyond him as it can possibly be. He knows he turns to evil all the time (_every _time), just as he knows it is still his contingency plan.

He doesn't deserve this, but Sam does. Sam's not ruined, not like he is. Sam wouldn't want another demon-deal. Sam is good.

_Don't do it for me._

He's in a chapel, and he's a sinner. He's praying for something he doesn't have a right to. The dark-spot on his soul is real, and there is no penance that will scrub it away. He can feel it there, burning, close to his heart.

Dean knows all these things. He knows. And still, he's on his knees, hands folded and sweaty.

A tear slides down his cheek and he wants to punch something until it bleeds, to let the stain grow until it consumes him entirely. Maybe he would. Maybe he will.

Light streams in from the ceiling. He sees he's not alone. There's an old lady two feet to his left, a young boy five pews in front of him. They're all praying too, praying like he is. What makes him more worthy? What makes Sam more worthy?

They're not. He isn't. But –

_Just one last miracle._

And he knows, guiltily, that his voice is the loudest one in the chapel.

.

.

.

.

.

Sam's heart is heavy and purposeless, like a paperweight. It sinks through his body, plummeting, until it leaves him altogether. It forsakes its inhospitable home because it can't stand to live there anymore.

Sam's soul wishes it could follow.

And then he feels indescribably light, as though he might float away – float right on up to Heaven, even though he knows he ought to be sinking down to Hell along with his paperweight heart.

Something anchors him to earth, though. Something lodged between the stench of blood and the sound of his own sobbing. It keeps him there, keeps him present. Weighing in his arms.

How many times can he be expected to do this? How many times can he carry –

The lightness makes him dizzy, makes him long for the counterbalance of his grief-burdened heart. He needs it. He needs the equilibrium. He needs it so he can see clearly, so he can make out his brother's features on the purple, bloated face of the corpse in front of him.

Because now there's just –

There's the blood, and the swelling.

There's the mouth that just spoke, and the stillness.

There's him…

And there's nothing.

He is alone.

He is alone in the car, alone in the bunker.

He has been alone, before. He has felt alone since he learned the word. The feeling and being have never intersected before, though, not like this.

After the first time there was Bobby, and now there's just –

No Bobby, no one.

Just whiskey, a burning in his stomach that at least makes him feel something more than nothing.

And a trove of supernatural artifacts. He has the tools to make this right. He has the know-how to bring his brother back. He has the will to go the distance, the will he lacked before.

Because there's no right and wrong anymore, no moral and immoral. There's only a line that's been crossed so many times it's become trampled, indistinguishable. He couldn't draw it again, even if he wanted to. It doesn't exist.

_Do you think he would want this?_

They've stopped asking themselves these questions.

Sam is grasping at matches, hands trembling. His vision is blurred for a myriad of reasons, and the searing in throat stems from the same varied sources. He is selling his soul before he even sparks the flame.

That line, that line is gone, a shadow, a dream…

All he understands is a bloodline, all he understands is Dean. And Dean is gone too_, _and he's_ not coming back unless you do something_.

Circumstance thwarts him, not his conviction. If he could, he would, a thousand times yes. He would do anything, everything, everything he said he would never. But he doesn't even have the choice.

It hurts so much, and he just wants it to be over, and –

_SAMMY LET ME GO_

If he lets him go, he'll float away.


End file.
